Warehouse and Operations as a Career and I\u2019m Marty T Hawkins, everyone having an outstanding week I hope! I was recently asked why I\u2019ve mentioned planning in the last two episodes? I won\u2019t go into Goals and Planning today but I did urge the listener to check out our episodes on just those very topics. But I will however remind everyone that if we\u2019re not working off of a plan, a direction towards our 2019 goals that we\u2019ll probably be making the same pay rate all year long & quite possibly next year too! So I\u2019ve been told that I keep mentioning the Pallet Runner position in my ramblings so I thought we\u2019d talk about that position today. If you have any topic suggestions, questions or maybe you\u2019d like to share something with our group, simply use host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com and email them too us, I\u2019ll research it, find an answer or make sure it gets out to the group. Be sure and join our Facebook and Twitter feeds to, using @whseandops, and if its answers from our peers your looking for check out the Warehouse Equipment Operators Community group on Facebook as well!
\nOK, the Pallet Runner position. Many times the pallet runner task is our first opportunity working with equipment, or really working an entire shift on it. At a smaller facility we may be using a walkie jack or an electric pallet jack that we walk beside, and be placing pallets from the back of the trailer, picking it up after the unloaders have it stacked and ready for the receiver, and we\u2019ll just be moving it to a staging area for the fork drivers to come out of the aisles and retrieve it for put away. Some of our small facilities may require us, as pallet runners, to wrap the pallets before hauling them, and for productivity reasons we may occasionally be the Unloader, Pallet Runner and the Forklift driver! The important thing about this position is we\u2019ll be getting experience at operating a piece of powered industrial equipment. The pallet runner\u2019s responsibility is to get the pallets placed properly, and in the correct area so as not to slow down the productivity of the other tasks around us. The unloaders need us to keep making them room to keep bringing stacked product out of the trailers and the fork drivers need to get the product racked and their aisles cleared. It\u2019s our responsibility to keep both of the working, all the while doing it Safely. Our jobs, typically being up front on the docks, and as we\u2019ve learned that\u2019ll be the most congested and dangerous area in the warehouse we\u2019ll need to be watching for both equipment and pedestrian traffic. In the larger facilities all that can be time\u2019s 10. Imagine having 12 or more forklifts running around and maybe 80 employees on our shift. Oh, and drivers. Drivers that are unloading their own trailers are dangerous to all of us. And it\u2019s not usually their fault. They\u2019re not familiar with the process, it may be their first time in our building. Even if the inbound clerk or dispatcher covered the procedures with them, we\u2019ll probably need to help them out, answer some questions maybe. Pallet Running at these larger facilities is going to require us to have some experience operating either a single or double electric rider pallet jack. It\u2019s usually the next step in the chain, say if we\u2019ve been an unloader as an example. We\u2019ll have a little experience operating equipment. We\u2019ve probably only made runs of like 50 or 60 feet at a time, but that\u2019s a good start, we\u2019ll know how to be safe, how the jack responds and we\u2019ll be pros at operating in tight spots, there\u2019s nothing trickier than getting stacked pallets out the back of a trailer, across the dock plate and staged through the maze of a full inbound dock right? So we\u2019ve been promoted to the pallet runner. It won\u2019t take long for us to be told by the Receiver and the Fork Operator how to do our jobs. Our Receiver will not mind telling us when we can haul a row of pallets or when he thinks we\u2019re doing it wrong.